What Gives With The Covenant With Black America?
By Deborah Mathis
Not only was the book nowhere to be found at a major bookstore in New Orleans — which has long carried a “Chocolate City” designation — but the clerk had never even heard of it.
The bookseller’s never having heard of The Covenant With Black America is troubling and, perhaps, telling.
This, after all, is no run-of-the-mill book. In late April, The Covenant hit No. 1 on The New York Times’ bestseller list of nonfiction paperbacks, the first nonfiction book by a Black publisher ever to claim that coveted spot.
No one may have been more surprised by the book’s surging popularity than its publisher, the Black-owned Third World Press. The nearly 40-year-old independent company features many notable Black authors, including Gwendolyn Brooks, Amiri Baraka and Sonia Sanchez. But it was Tavis Smiley, the indefatigable all-media impresario, who brought Third World into the view of the masses.
